


On Remembering

by partnerincrime



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 18:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19340161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partnerincrime/pseuds/partnerincrime
Summary: On remembering: it’s not that Eames is bad at it, he merely remembers what he wants to remember, and decides to forget everything else.--Arthur stared long and hard at Eames. In that time, Eames also took in Arthur, the smooth skin that skated over cheekbones, and the cleanliness of his shave despite a knick on his chin. That Arthur’s hair still curled over his ears, the pomade losing some of its hold under the hot Vegas sun; his eyes, a simple brown, burned piercing hot shrapnel into Eames. Unflinching and defiant as if he has to prove something to someone – and it dawned on Eames that Arthur was… well, Arthur was very young.





	On Remembering

**Author's Note:**

> A meandering piece that was meant to capture a particular feeling but ballooned into something else entirely. I've been pretty much a brain-fart this entire year (see: this piece), so hoping that posting something that's actually finished will get me out of this awful awful funk in time for Inception Big Bang.
> 
> Partially beta'd by the lovely [bumblebeesknees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblebeesknees/pseuds/bumblebeesknees). All other mistakes are my own.

Eames forgets a lot about the little things when it comes to Arthur.

Now, well, _wait a minute_ , that's not exactly true, Eames thinks – and he retracts that statement. He deserves a bit more credit than that. He’s a _forger_ for Christ’s sakes, a professional; Arthur would have never have even considered putting Eames’ number in his phone if he was bad at his job, god forbid (although Eames may have been more than a little flamboyant with the blue-eyed bombshell he cooked up on their first ever job together, just to make extra sure that Arthur was watching). You don’t get far in this business without a solid rolodex of faces and names that you can pull up on the fly – and luckily for Eames, he’s incredibly good with faces.

He knows he can come off a slow sometimes. A strategic move on his part, playing the British man with the disarming smile and the acerbic wit; what better way is there to lower another’s guard and gain access to a treasure trove of unconscious tics and misplaced secrets? How Yusuf begins muttering chemical formulae in Swahili when he’s trying to get the measurements right; how Ariadne’s foot begins tapping out the beat of Bolero when she’s huffed enough epoxy glue fumes to tranquilize an elephant, neck-deep in balsa wood and cardboard shavings; the way that Dom twists painfully at his ring finger when he’s had about enough, three seconds away from ripping into your plan teeth-first. All these triggers and habits that Eames now knows unconsciously rote into muscle and bone; and it merely takes Eames a couple of days to familiarize himself with all of it, the gears, wires, and the intricacies of human mechanics, to know where to prod and poke to tighten or unwind a person, just like cocking a gun.

It’s not only faces and microexpressions though. Eames can remember loads of other stuff too, stuff that goes way back. The piano scales his mum drilled into him as a child, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and the final score of the last game of rugby he played in university. The series of roulette pockets he bet on the day he lost everything, and the passcodes he used to break into Rijksmuseum, the day he made it all back. The complete sum of dollars he made on his first ever job as forger (both in the art and non-art sense); the phone numbers to all the pizza places within a quarter-mile radius from SoHo.

That Arthur’s first words to him was spoken between pursed lips, “...You aren’t at all what I was expecting.”

On remembering: it’s not that Eames is bad at it, he merely remembers what he wants to remember, and decides to forget everything else.

––

“Oh bollocks… what time was my flight again?” Eames asks suddenly, jolting out of his seat. His question hangs stale in the hot Bangkok air despite it barely being six in the morning, the sun barely in the sky. Six in the morning and already the air conditioning is humming loudly in the hotel lobby on full blast, and yet there is sweat forming in neat beads at the nape of Eames’ neck, only to soak his collar as he stands.

Eames’ shin nearly collides into the wood of the low coffee table – though luckily Yusuf’s sprawling form is there to cushion the blow.

“ _Ow_ ,” Yusuf starts, the oomph of his reaction muffled by a yawn. It doesn’t take an expert to read Yusuf, to know that he’s exaggerating, but Eames has known Yusuf longer than that and knows he’ll be fast asleep again in a mere matter of minutes.

“Aren’t your flights listed on your itinerary?” Ariadne pipes up. Her tone is politely light, a smidge too loud and too innocent. She’s perusing a pamphlet with several young women in bikinis riding jet skis printed on the cover.

_Cheeky thing_. Eames knows exactly what’s she doing, riling a certain someone up – no tourism brochure could ever make someone smile as wide as Ariadne is right now. Trying to shame him in front of everyone (and in front of one person in particular) – this isn’t preschool, he wants to tell her, then stick out his tongue.

But he is much more of a well-behaved, 30-plus year-old man to behave like this, engaging in a battle of affections with a 20-year old girl.

He ignores her; he chooses to fumble around in the chest pocket of his jacket, looking for said itinerary instead, a 8x11 piece of paper folded into a neat square.

He finds a pen, tissue, and three (likely melted; the heat was _unbearable_ here) chocolate mints instead.

“You mean you lost it.”

Eames can’t look at Arthur right now, not when he’s in the throes of his search. He tries the front right pant pocket instead, gripping at a hard, flat object. Nope… _poker chip_. “That’s not exactly the word I would use.” In his left pocket, some coins and bills, condoms… his phone.

“Eames.”

There are nothing in his back pockets either, beside his wallet. “Let’s not get into semantics again, love,” Eames says as he eyes his suitcase. He wouldn’t possibly have… “I’m sure it’s in here somewhere...”

When Eames finally chances a look at Arthur, Arthur’s arms are crossed and his eyes ice-cold.

This sloppiness is all Arthur’s fault, Eames grumbles as he begins unlocking the TSA-approved locks on the zips. Truly, who else is there to blame in this whole predicament? On any other job, Eames would have done it all: he would’ve planned his own logistics during the investigation phase, done the background checks, dug into the potential characters he’ll need to play, and what tails he needed to do. But being on a job with Arthur meant Arthur would do all of it for of him, just shy of doing the forging himself. Being on a job with Arthur meant a guaranteed aisle seat on flights (he always got so fidgety on planes, and 12 hours up in the air was the perfect time to browse faces and charm the air hostesses into giving him more mini-bottles of booze). It also meant that there will be a car waiting to pick him at Heathrow once he touches down, all the details sent to his phone, and a copy stapled behind the itinerary. Eames has convinced himself its the only way that Arthur knows how to show that he loves him.

If he could only find said itinerary…

Though it doesn’t bother Eames that Arthur doesn’t trust him. Really. Arthur handling the details permitted Eames to focus on other things, more important things – like the fact that Arthur wears shirts sized 15.1” neck and 34” sleeve, has a bad habit of clenching his teeth, and that he will always choose mango chicken over General Tso, if the menu permits.

Luckily no one in the lobby besides Yusuf, Ariadne, Arthur, and himself – and he moves the coffee table in favour of dumping the contents of his suitcase all over the floor without too much of a second glance. Dom isn’t here, which seems to unwind some tension from Arthur as he sits back to enjoy the spectacle of Eames being a bumbling fool in a public area – and Eames wants to huff out loudly and complain because – because why is it that only Dom gets to be late, anyways? Dom is nearly half-an-hour late and they might all miss their respective flights because of him – while Eames is only guilty of _potentially_ losing his itinerary. Yet it’s Eames who gets chewed out, interrogated like a criminal: where is the justice in that?

Dom’s phone calls could only be so important, Eames thinks grumpily as he pulls a Hawaiian shirt out of the pile, obscenely decorated with large red hibiscus all over.

“That shirt is hideous,” Ariadne recoils, and everyone but Eames seems to agree based on their expressions. Eames chooses to ignore her again.

Where was he before he was so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, Dom and his important phone calls. _Important phone calls_ , or so Arthur says, anyways. Eames is pretty sure that Dom’s just slept in because a man with dark circles the size of dinner plates could never resist a king-size bed with 400-thread count sheets.

Not that Eames is calling Arthur a liar, but Eames is no fool in the lengths that Arthur will go to cover for Dom. Arthur shouldn’t be the one to babysit him. No, not when Arthur is in his twenties, and Dom is years older in both aspects of his personal and professional life – Dominick Cobb, with his bucket loads of architectural and engineering Masters and his PhDs, who holds commendation with the U.S. Army or the CIA or both of the two (Eames doesn’t actually care to remember); the man who practically invented the dream-sharing profession, who not only had a wife but chose to bear the consequences of fathering two children. _Two_. _Children_. Eames has every right to be critical, especially when Arthur harps all over Eames just for losing his itinerary.

...Maybe the trust thing does bother Eames a little bit, then.

Why shouldn’t it though? He’s known Arthur for a considerable amount of time and he likes him. Likes, likes him. Captivated by him is probably the better turn of phrase, this 25-going-on-40 year old man deserves way more than a life constant with high stakes, difficult people, and babysitting Dom. There is no one who is as steadfast as Arthur, no one who Eames would rather want to know more; and yet it pains Eames to see Arthur shy away from his flirting because he isn’t used to the attention, and to watch him handhold Ariadne through the basics of dream-sharing despite being nearly the same age as her – because in reality, Arthur’s been pulled into doing this for that long.

Eames constantly tells Arthur that he should take a vacation. Arthur treats it as a joke but Eames is dead serious – he also helpfully adds that if Arthur is ever in need of a buddy to show him the ropes of relaxing, he is merely one phone call away.

(Arthur never calls him though. It’s as Eames predicts).

Arthur lets him struggle for a long time – and only steps in when Eames is neck deep in his suitcase, unzipping zippers and spilling an inexplicable number of swimming trunks onto the lobby floor.

Arthur reaches over the pile to gently untuck a neat square of paper in the mesh pocket at the very front, the one teeming with Eames’ colourful socks. “QR 831 at 9:05am,” Arthur replies crisply as he tucks the folded paper into the front of Eames’ shirt pocket. His breath is warm in Eames’ ear, and Eames is still sweating through his shirt. “Economy class, Seat 24B. We aren’t on vacation Mr. Eames, so don’t be late.”

It’s only slightly humiliating. Admittedly, Eames is all for it.

Without another word, Arthur stands and breezes past all of Eames’ splayed luggage, glancing at his watch. “Dom,” he calls past Eames, walking towards the revolving doors with long, lean strides, “right on time. The taxi is here.”

Eames’ eyes narrow.

“Don’t–” Ariadne starts.

Too late. “Playing favourites, darling,” Eames gasps out, his words loud from the centre of the grandiose lobby, bouncing off all that white marble that make up the columns supporting high ceiling, the blue patterned carpets sprawled out like prim-cut lawns, into the windows of coloured glass, “How utterly _unprofessional_ of you. And a married man no less. Think of the _children_!”

Eames thinks he can see Arthur’s ears burning even as he walks away.

Ariadne says, “He’s going to get you for that one day.” She raises an eyebrow at him.

“And I’m going to get you for instigating that, you narc.”

“What can I say? All’s fair in love and war.”

Eames’ eyebrows shoot up. “I wasn’t aware this was a competition.”

“It’s not,” Ariadne grins, “when we’re not competitors.”

Eames pauses in the midst of repacking his suitcase. “...What?”

She begins to gently shake Yusuf awake. “You’re like an open book, Eames. There’s no need for me to compete when I know I’m not even in the running.”

––

When it comes to Arthur, it’s also startlingly easy for Eames to remember that he is head-over-heels infatuated with him.

“Where did you meet Arthur?” Ariadne chooses to sit next to Eames in the backseat of the airport limo, her small elbows digging sharply into his sides. The limo seats seven, so it is upsetting to Eames that it’s Ariadne who chooses to sit so close to him, while Arthur chooses to sit in one of the seats in front of him.

Eames chances a glance at Arthur. “Why don’t you ask him?” Eames plays off the suggestion as he doesn’t care for the answer, glancing out the tinted windows to follow a car pass by. His ears though, strain to hear Arthur’s response.

Ariadne taps Arthur on the shoulder, smiling sheepishly. He, in turn, smiles back at her; the corners of his eyes crease handsomely. “Yes?”

That fucking tease.

Arthur’s expression sobers however, as Ariadne repeats her question.

“We met in Vegas on a job,” he replies bluntly. He catches Eames’ eye for a second – Eames winks at him – before he turns back around.

Ariadne is visibly disappointed by Arthur’s answer. “That’s it?”

“What exactly are you looking for?” Eames asks. “You know our dear Arthur likes to keep his secrets close to his chest.” Though he speaks to Ariadne, his gaze never wanders from Arthur even as Arthur turns away, his shoulders tensed. Every movement that Arthur makes is just another hint for Eames, more clues to collect. Eames in his mind, traces Arthur’s profile is if trying to memorize its contour shape, watching the muscles move in Arthur’s neck as his jaw clenches and unclenches.

“Well…” Ariadne drops her voice conspiratorially, “You two clearly have, like… a history. Arthur doesn’t usually hate people to this level right off the bat.”

Eames snorts at this utterly poor read of Arthur’s character. At the same time, Arthur says, “I don’t hate Eames.”

Eames perks up at this. He kicks Ariadne and motions for her to keep going with this line of questioning.

_Ow_ , she mouths. She starts gesturing with fingers at Eames – her index finger and her fist first, then after a while, she switches to a single hand with all five fingers spread out – numbers, Eames realizes, that if he wants answers, he’ll have to give Ariadne an additional portion of his cut. Cheeky bugger. He’ll need to be on the lookout for this one.

Eames pretends not to understand her.

Ariadne gives up on Eames after a while. She still begrudgingly asks about it though, her curiosity finally getting the better of her. “Did he fuck up the job?”

“I did not–” Eames immediately cuts in, appalled.

“He didn’t,” Arthur breezes. He turns to stare idly out the window. “There was just a minor miscommunication between us, that’s all.”

Eames pauses. He takes the words and parses them through, studying Arthur’s seemingly deliberate choice of words. He wants more clues but reading Arthur in profile is nearly impossible given how he has inched further and further away from Eames in the time that he’s given his answer. But distance is not a challenge for Eames and he tries again, leaning in closer to study Arthur, to follow the line of his cheek and the slow slope of his nose. How Arthur turns his head further away because he knows Eames is looking straight through him as if the intensity of his gaze will cleave him in two.

Then, softly: “Is that what it was, darling?”

The three of them go pitch quiet. There is still a hum to the limo: Yusuf’s fitful snoring next to Arthur and the chatter from the front as Dom tries to interrogate the driver in halting Thai. The buzz of the air conditioning as it continues to blow cold air into Eames’ face, as the scenery around them phase in and out of green into a sprawling cascade of buildings. Their limo zooms by all of it, none of it enough to hide the rising sun as they make their way to BKK; but Eames’ vision is never distracted, nor does it stray.

Arthur continues to stare out the window and doesn’t answer him back.

Ariadne’s eyebrows are probably up to her hairline right about now. There is a lot that Eames can tell Ariadne about what Arthur means, but he refrains. He owns a part of the story, but not in its whole; Eames leaves it up to Arthur give what he wants to away.

“Arthur,” Eames murmurs.

Because what they don’t tell Ariadne is this: when Eames first met Arthur, it was at a Las Vegas casino two years ago. Eames doesn’t remember the name of the casino (naturally, because it’s not an important detail), but he does remember the license plate of the black convertible he rented, how he drove up the coach gate with the top down, his shirt too-many-buttons open and his aviators riding low on his face. He remembers spotting a severe man sheathed in a black suit waiting there, and the two questions that occurred simultaneously as he approached: was the man not cooking in the Vegas heat, and it would he accept a $500 tip from Eames to help him get out of it?

He tossed his keys to the man with a wink as he stepped out of the car, but the man didn’t even bother to catch them. _$1,000 then_ , Eames revised, as the keys clattered loudly against the pavement.

The man raised a disapproving eyebrow, words pinched. “...You aren’t at all what I was expecting.”

And neither was Arthur to Eames for that matter, when Eames realized that he wasn’t valet. “ _You’re_ the point?”

Arthur’s expression soured considerably. “And you’re late, Mr. Eames.”

They moved their discussion over one of the craps tables. To blend in, Eames had told Arthur, but in reality, his gambling addiction was a hard one to shake. Arthur was in the midst of his spiel, explaining the players and the nuances of the job, when it was Eames’ turn to be the shooter.

“Blow, ” Eames interrupted Arthur, gesturing to the dice in his hand.

Arthur wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

“You don’t need me to fucking blow on your dice for them to do anything special. They’re dice.”

“Indulge me.”

Arthur stared long and hard at Eames. In that time, Eames also took in Arthur, the smooth skin that skated over cheekbones, and the cleanliness of his shave despite a knick on his chin. That Arthur’s hair still curled over his ears, the pomade losing some of its hold under the hot Vegas sun; his eyes, a simple brown, burned piercing hot shrapnel into Eames. Unflinching and defiant as if he has to prove something to someone – and it dawned on Eames that Arthur was… well, Arthur was _very young_.

Eames immediately took a step back.

“Buy me a drink if you win then.”

Eames paused. “Can you even…” Eames said slowly, gesturing towards the bar.

“I will kick you off this job if you finish that sentence.” With that, Arthur blows.

“I'm 23 y'know,” Arthur said three hours later, after he’s downed three drinks too many and his tie becomes more and more beautifully undone, “perfectly legal.” Except 23 isn’t that far off from 21, and the words formed different shapes in Arthur’s wet, drunk mouth; and what Eames had heard, slightly buzzed, was “perfectly illegal” instead.

Eames reacted badly to this. He immediately let go of Arthur, sent him tumbling into the hotel room and crashing into one of the beds.

They’d just made it back to Arthur’s room. The last three hours had been a terribly unsuccessful game of 20 questions at the casino bar, but Eames learned a lot about Arthur regardless of Arthur’s reluctance to provide any honest answers. There was someone who was underneath the pomp and abrasiveness, Eames had learned, someone vulnerable and green who chose to wear armour in the shape of bespoke suits and pretended to be 40, honed his edges over a rough stone made up of equal parts grueling work hours and interactions with the cache of shady people who built up the dream-sharing underground.

But not this Arthur, no: not this one sprawled across one of the queen beds, with his suit jacket off and his hair undone.

No, this Arthur looked incredibly soft in the dim hotel room, with a rounder face and hidden bones – his eyes bright caught in lamplight, and his cheeks darkly flushed. He looked criminally young that it made Eames uncomfortable to be this close; yet still, he could not resist the temptation to reach over to brush a strand of hair away from Arthur’s face.

As he reached over, Arthur caught him by the wrist. “What’re you looking at?” He slurred as he spoke.

“You, love,” Eames murmured. His voice started from somewhere in his stomach and rumbled through his chest. “Tell me… who are you really?” he asked as he leaned further in – because in that moment, Eames realized that he was perhaps more than a little drunk too, and being this close to Arthur was just like shooting down another drink.

_What on earth was he doing_? He knew better than to take on this deadly cocktail of work acquaintances and mysterious young men, two things that he learned the hard way that they should never be mixed. With much exertion and internal persuasion, he stilled his beating heart and the overwhelming desire to bury his face into the crook of Arthur’s neck and _breath_.

Arthur let go of Eames wrist first. “I don’t know,” he finally said to Eames. He scooched over on the bed to make room, and Eames still could not do anything but hold his breath.

_23_. He tried to remember, but he couldn’t then, not exactly. He lies down.

“You’re still young. You have plenty of time to figure it out.”

“I don’t think so,” Arthur said ominously.

They laid still next to each other and, for a long time, didn’t move.

Eames left once Arthur was fast asleep. He had to. He couldn’t stay, not when he was in a _state_ , not when he was on a job; not when temptation was only an arm’s length away and calling to Eames in the form of a prickly young man with sharp eyes and a barbed tongue, covered in right angles all over. And yet he pared them down for Eames… well, Eames and a couple of glasses of gin – but that had been enough. Eames had a good enough grasp of the human condition to see the signs, to see to someone vulnerable and tangled in the ropes of figuring himself out; Eames had been through it too. Except the stakes were much higher for Arthur than his had ever been: Eames in his early twenties never had a gun held to his head, nor was he one responsible for pulling the trigger.

In truth, dream-sharing was the farthest thing that Eames wanted for Arthur – and to think this was a ridiculous thought: he did not know Arthur besides a drunken three hours, he knew nothing about Arthur besides his name and his face, his age and that he had a disarming pair of dimples; his habit of tapping his fingers against the table when he was annoyed; the masqueraded joy that glinted through his eyes when Eames described his heist in Venice as he took a long sip of his drink, and the shattered glass that replaced it when Eames tried to get any closer.

But for Eames, that had been enough. Eames had caught a single glance of what lay underneath, and he hungered. Hungered for the challenge, hungered to have and to hold more.

To have Arthur exposed to him all the way down to his roots, his core… what would be the chances of Arthur coming away with Eames? There were a million possibilities in which Eames could take him. Not France – Arthur didn’t seem to like wine very much; but what about Italy? Venice perhaps, then. He ruminated over that option for several moments, before realizing that, well, anywhere would do really, so long that Arthur agreed to it. He would’ve smuggled Arthur into his luggage now if he could, or held him like a locket over his heart, wearing him as close as possible to his chest.

But Arthur wouldn’t want that, Eames surmised, especially not now.

So he left. He left a pair of pocketed casino dice on the Arthur’s night stand, too, just for good luck.

And to Arthur’s point, that Vegas job went extremely well. Arthur made no comment about that night at the casino throughout the entirety of the job, promptly returning to his glacial state, so Eames’ assumed that he didn’t want to talk about it, or he just didn’t remember.

But in the limo on the way to the Bangkok airport, Eames never gets the chance to clarify any of these things with Arthur.

Because as soon as Eames opens his mouth, their car gets T-boned by a truck that hits them with the force of a freight train – and Arthur goes flying out of his seat, his head colliding hard against one of the black-tinted windows.

––

Seatbelts don’t seem to exist in Thai taxis, and for that, Eames is furious.

Eames helps Ariadne out the vehicle, and they are the last two out of the car. If the compressed wreckage of aluminum could be called a vehicle anymore, the left side doors crunched in so far into the frame that Eames can see the front bumper and license plate of the truck stamped into the metal like a serial number. The car hood is popped open and the faint smell of smoke fills the air – fire? – Eames coughs into his sleeve as he moves to get as far away from the scene as possible.

Ariadne seems to okay condition: slightly wobbly on her feet, and a growing bruise on her temple – maybe concussed? And for Eames, besides a few aches in his side where he slid into Ariadne and a twinge in his neck he discovers as he moves his head, he finds himself feeling more alright than he thought he should be feeling; sore, but not unbearable, not unlike sleeping against a wooden pillow or a hard floor.

Panic only flares up when he sees Dom and Yusuf hovering over someone on the ground.

“Fuck,” Ariadne swears. She lets go of Eames and becomes surprisingly steady as she runs over.

Eames on the other hand – his legs begins to burn as he reaches for the poker chip in his pocket.

“Arthur, are you alright?” Dom is shaking Arthur (“Don’t shake him, you idiot!”).

When Eames sees Arthur, his jaw tightens and the ragged sound that escapes him – he might not be breathing right now. Because Arthur’s face is a mess on the ground in front of him, painted like a Cezanne with ruddy reds and splotchy blues, that seem to cover his face in random scrapes all over. His cheek is swollen, forehead bruised, and there is blood dripping through the spaces of his teeth; Eames can’t bear to look any further. Arthur looks so, so, so stupidly young like this and it pains Eames to just think that it was Arthur minutes before, scolding him about losing his itinerary.

Three seconds: three seconds is all it would take for Eames to run over to the truck, pull the driver to the ground and smash his fists into his face. He’s angry, angry at this truck driver, angry at the world, angry at himself, angry that he wasn’t the one sitting in the middle seat. Angry that he didn’t work harder to convince Arthur that he was worth it sooner, that he was ten times more valuable than what he offered as a point – that he didn’t try to ask Arthur to leave any of this behind.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he lets out.

But as Arthur’s eyes flutter open, Eames’ mouth does too, because Arthur immediately begins rattling off broken bits of details, things that he doesn’t need to be saying, especially not now: a license plate number, a vivid description of the truck driver, and contacts in which Dom needs to call because he’s pretty sure that the crash is due to a hired hit by a rival businessman –

“And no hospital,” Arthur croaks.

“Arthur–” Dom looks uncertain.

Eames already has his phone open and dialing fucking emergency.

––

When Eames has to pretend to be Arthur’s British second cousin, twice-removed at hospital reception to claim visitation rights, it is then that Eames realizes that today has really taken a turn for the worse. It’s barely even 10am, and Arthur is in the hospital and all of them having missed their flights. Their benefactor isn’t going to be very happy – no one in the dream-sharing industry ever liked waiting, and the evidence is right in this very waiting room: Eames could see the team going batty with boredom before his very eyes, drugged up on the smelled of antiseptic and cheap coffee, exacerbated by the same news broadcast that played over and over again in hypnotic repetition. Around the 30-minute mark, Yusuf starts calculating the Somnacin dosages it would take to knock out each person who walks by him, while Ariadne is halfway through constructing a small village out of waiting room magazines.

Let’s not forget about Dom though; he apparently ceases to function properly without Arthur at his hip for periods longer than an hour, and continues to pace back and forth wearing treads into the linoleum floors and muttering to himself like a crazy person.

Eames shoos them off – and tells Dom to get his shit together to get their flights rebooked, to find a new hotel, to get food etc. etc. Looking at Dom like this made Eames want to punch him – so he assumed that this was a good, productive compromise.

The doctor comes over to talk to Eames (or second cousin, twice-removed, Bertrand Miller). He tells Eames that there is no damage to Arthur’s spine – that’s the good news. But he does suffer from a concussion and slight whiplash, which may affect him in the form of headaches, memory loss, dizziness, or neck pain. (“Not to worry though, he’s young,” the doctor had said; “well, no shit,” Eames replied).

Arthur’s hospital room is not a room in fact, but merely a thin sliver of space created by several curtains strung up to give him the illusion of privacy. There are shadows moving behind him, hidden people talking behind him, and Eames jumps at a sudden loud chest-rattling wheeze.

Eames isn’t afraid of hospitals per se, but he doesn’t prefer them – they surface a lot of bad memories about a young adulthood that Eames tries rather hard to forget.

But as the doctor leaves, Eames stays. Arthur, in his tiny bed, is still sound asleep. He looks much smaller without a suit, Eames observes as he pulls up a seat next to Arthur’s bedside, as he sits backwards in the seat so he can lean against the backrest, his chin resting in his arms; as if a backrest could suffice as a metal shield or a brace, merely a piece of flimsy plastic to hold Eames back. Hold Eames back from he doesn’t quite know exactly, but he feels that it likely involves stealing Arthur from this hospital bed, copious amounts of alcohol, two plane tickets, and a candle-lit dinner over a nice waterfront view: of what _could be_. Not what is – because what is, is now – and one glimpse of Arthur is like the first wave of a maestro’s baton, drudging an awful notes from within Eames, like a crescendo that keeps building that never quite reaches its peak.

Repaired and cleaned up, Eames thinks that Arthur doesn’t look much better than he did hours before.

Eames can’t look at the bruises. He can’t look at the cuts and scrapes, the shaved side of Arthur’s head where they had to pick out bits of glass and sew the wounds closed. No, it’ll just make him feel more angry and overwhelmed, a little bit more terrible all at once – and Arthur would never want _sympathy_ , especially not over him. Carry on and keep going, he would say with that iron focus and white-hot gaze; don’t wallow, just go.

But Eames isn’t Arthur – and he can’t just go... go rip himself from the present. Not when his dreams are tangled amongst reality and the future’s odds are always up in the air – no, what else can he bet on but _now_? And that’s why he does it, wills himself into experiencing and reminiscing in equal, vivid detail, because the act of remembering plants him in today when he is always unsure about tomorrow – and right now, he is so very unsure about tomorrow – so he focuses on what he can verify is true. Like the two wrinkles forming creases in Arthur’s brow; the shape of his lips and the slight crook to his nose; the three moles that run parallel against Arthur’s clavicle, like three small pips of a die. These details are in his memory, totems of sorts – totems that drag him back into the sad landscape of reality that rears a loneliness in Eames, a feeling rooted in truth.

Eames counts them slowly then quickly, anything to keep him distracted from looking at Arthur as a whole again. Eames drags a hand down the side of his own scruff, and lets out a long, suffering sigh.

A hand catches his wrist.

And that’s when Eames realizes that Arthur is awake – and he’s staring straight at him.

Eames doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Good morning, darling,” is what he settles on, and even to him, he sounds scratchy and rough like a woolen blanket or the first few skips of a needle against a well-worn record.

“...Hello,” Arthur finally says. The word is unsteady and loose in his mouth – very unArthur-like. He blinks a few times, and Eames watches his dark lashes flutter open and closed.

Again, Eames is at a loss for words. When have words ever been this difficult? Eames can’t recall such a time. “You had us all scared stiff for a moment there,” he says, and even to his ears, the sentence sounds hollow in his mouth.

With a wince, Arthur tries to sit up. “Where are we?” he asks as he gives up, and lies back down again.

“Hospital, love. In Thailand. Don’t worry – we didn’t give them your real name or anything – but you looked like you were in some dire need of rest.”

“...Rest?” Arthur’s eyes seem to widen.

“Yes, the thing you do when you close your eyes and you sleep–”

“...What time is it? Where’s my phone?”

God, if he could just stop, for once in his life– “Dom has your phone,” Eames replies tightly, unhappy by the direction of Arthur’s first series of questions. His left hand goes to rest on his hip – to his left pocket where Arthur’s phone remains hidden. “He went to find us a place to stay, rebook flights, find some food. Nothing to worry your pretty head about.”

“What about–”

“Arthur.” Eames tries again. Softer this time because Arthur is as pale as milk glass, and yet his mind doesn’t seem to be operating at a similar pace. Like a mechanical soldier coming to life, readjusting, reevaluating what of his body works and what doesn’t – raising a shoulder slightly off the bed, tilting his head from side to side – ignoring the obvious fact that he is only flesh and bone, and is lucky to come out of this alive.

But Eames is there to remember for him. “Darling,” Eames repeats, and he can’t help but to reach over and touch Arthur now, to perhaps remind Arthur of what he has forgotten; he pushes back loose hair and can skate light fingers over the shell of Arthur’s ear. “I don’t think the doctor indicated the crash impaired your hearing, but let me say this again: nothing to worry about. Lay back down in that rickety old bed and get some rest.”

Arthur jerks at Eames’ touch – but it is neither away or closer, just Arthur’s hand tightening tenfold on his wrist.

Eames wishes, painfully, that this were that much easier. He wishes that seeing Arthur in relatively good shape, surviving getting shoved several feet into a car frame door with only but a handful of few stitches and bruises, unshaken, felt like a good thing to him – but it doesn’t. Not when he knows that this isn’t the end to the gut-wrenching chaos to Arthur’s life that comes along with this industry – if anything, it is merely the beginning; it is with certainty that Eames knows that Arthur has suffered worse than this car accident in dreams, and that Arthur considers this just another consequence of his day job – that he should expect this level of mortal peril in the real world now, a justifiable constant in order to get things done.

But Eames isn’t Arthur’s babysitter – no, he knows that Arthur can handle himself. He just wishes that Arthur didn’t have to, or feel obliged that this was how he had to live his life.

“I best go and find Dom– ” Eames begins; he needs to stop torturing himself over this. He shouldn’t be here any longer. He goes to stand.

“You’re not staying then?”

Eames freezes.

You give Arthur a gun and he knows exactly where to shoot. To ask such a pointed question in which there is only one correct answer and many wrong ones – in which Eames doesn’t even feel allowed to respond. And the effect is only exacerbated because Arthur asks it like this, riddled with a nakedness that is definitely unArthur-like: looking at Eames like _that_ , expecting something from him, wanting something from him – something that Eames is unsure that he’s supposed to give.

“I…” Eames starts, but the quip dies on his tongue. Flirting is his go-to method of handling Arthur, but he’s scared that Arthur will take him seriously today. And he can’t – not now. Not like this.

“What? I’m not precious – stop looking at me like that,” Arthur complains. “Why are you being weird?”

Is he being weird?

“ _What_?” Arthur demands.

The silence from Arthur right before the crash haunts Eames. He starts with a deep breath, and then an explanation. “That night, two years ago…” and at that, Arthur blanches as white as his sheets.

“I just asked if you were staying. You don’t need to explain yourself–”

“Oh, but darling, I think I do. If I had known that had been bothering you, I would’ve clarified sooner,” he says as he gently removes Arthur’s hand from his wrist to place it on the bed.

He sits back down. Arthur’s hand had felt hot, alive under his touch.

Eames stills himself, and then tries again. “When we first met – I have that image of you seared into my brain like a brand. You, standing out in front of that casino with your dark slick suit with that permanent scowl glued to your face. Yes, just like that–” Eames quirks a smile as Arthur involuntarily demonstrates, “-trying to hide your youth like a weakness, when it was anything but. I knew if I had the chance, I wanted to get to know you, if you’d let me in.”

The look on Arthur’s face is telling him to shut up, but Eames – he can’t.

“And then I did get my chance. You’re the biggest tease in the world, you know that? Those dimples could start wars, love.”

“Eames–”

“Hush now, let me finish,” he sucks in another breath and he continues. If he doesn’t keep going now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get the chance to, not again. “That Arthur at the casino entrance, I knew. I could handle that rules-based Arthur, I knew how that Arthur worked: someone obsessed by the details, being _right_ , always being one step ahead. But when you were drunk… in your room, you opened up to me in a way that– that I’m not sure you would’ve now, knowing you – did I begin to doubt.”

Arthur can no longer look him in the eyes; he stares blankly at a spot behind Eames’ ear, unmoving, as if it were the most interesting spot in the world. While Eames’ mind, again, wanders to that night, two years ago: Arthur sprawled out on the bed with his shirt rumpled, and his tie undone. His eyes heavy-lidded, his limbs loose – his lips wet with could only be that last shot of alcohol he downed before they decided to turn in.

Eames swallows. “You looked so… fragile then, that night,” he says softly. “I knew couldn’t stay because it wasn’t my place to. Not when you were so young, still trying to figure yourself out–”

“I was 23, Eames,” Arthur interrupts, exasperated, despite looking as embarrassed as hell. “I was a fully consenting adult. You can’t just think these things and make assumptions about who I am and what I want.”

“23 is still young. I barely knew how to feed myself when I was 23.”

“Yeah, well – I’m sure not sure that’s the case at 30-something either, seeing how you live off a singular diet of Italian food and booze.”

Deflecting. _Again_. Eames isn’t completely a lovesick sop to notice the particular technique that Arthur uses – engaging Eames in a touch of banter or flirtation – to get him off his back, away from his open wounds and back into safe pockets of conversation in which Arthur feels in control.

But it doesn’t work this time around, no. “Well… if I can’t make assumptions about what is it you want... then _tell me_ , what exactly do you want?” He sets his crossed arms up on Arthur’s bed.

Their gazes fall on each other at a stand-off, like two soldiers on a battlefield. Arthur is so close to him like this; he can feel each breath rattling from within Arthur’s chest before it fans out across his face.

Arthur though, gives in first. He turns away from Eames to stare at the ceiling. After a while, he says, “I want a lot of things, I guess.” He still refuses to look at Eames as he responds – but even without studying his expression, Eames knows Arthur’s desperate to steer the conversation away from himself. So it makes sense when Arthur asks:

“But what about you; what do _you_ want?”

But to Eames, Arthur’s question is easy. “You know how I feel about you.”

“...And what’s that supposed to mean?”

As if Arthur didn’t know. “I have terrible designs on your virtue, darling,” Eames says after a while – hinted with a fondness more than anything else. “If you’d let me, I’d like to take you far away from here, and introduce you to a life that involves way less hitmen and you being continents away from death’s door. Perhaps long walks on the beach, titillating conversation, wining and dining you ... amongst other things. Other things that really shouldn’t be spoken aloud,” and Eames gestures vaguely to the paper-thin curtains behind him.

Arthur’s breath hitches. “What’s stopping you then?”

“Oh, love,” Eames barks out a soulless laugh, “you can’t be serious.”

Arthur frowns. “What?”

There is no escaping it, that feeling that shoots through Eames whenever Arthur gives him these kind of responses. As if he’s some filthy man perving on a someone severely younger than he is, despite the fact that Arthur is a more-than-capable adult who doesn’t need Eames, a criminal in seven countries who hasn’t quite kicked his gambling habit, to look out for him. When all Eames wants to do is love him and take care of him in the sickening way Eames wants to, when it is clear as day that Arthur doesn’t need any of it at all.

And that’s why it feels like such a crime to Eames, to want Arthur in such a capacity: to place such expectations upon Arthur when Arthur already has so much heaped upon his shoulders already, when neither of them actually knows what Arthur wants himself.

_I’m still right here. Even if you aren’t looking._

Defeated, Eames finds his scruff again, and he runs his hand over it as he sighs. “Nothing, I guess. You just tell me when you figure it out then, darling, and I'll just be… right here.”

Arthur shifts again. This time towards Eames, and the intensity of the look he gives weighs on Eames like a thousand kilos, like an anchor pulling Eames under. It is equal parts searching, curious, and heavy – searching for a hidden intention perhaps, when Eames no longer has anything else to give because has laid out himself bare with all his weaknesses exposed, large gaping holes in his kevlar. He doesn’t know how to be anymore obvious than this.

Again, it is Arthur who seems to give in first. Maybe it’s how pathetic Eames must look right now – but the fight dies out of him, and he reaches out for Eames again.

He hesitates, “I just… just… could you stay a little bit longer?”

The ghost touch on Eames’ arm is tentative, and it makes Eames’ heart jump.

There is a haunted look to Arthur as he seems to shift in his bed to make space for Eames, but maybe it’s just Eames’ vision playing tricks on him, and maybe he ought to get that doctor fellow back in here to see if he’s alright too, because never would he have comprehended Arthur…

Eames holds his breath.

Poker chip, where is his blasted poker chip, he thinks as he hunts around for it in his pockets, looking, hoping to feel the familiar knicks and grooves against the ridge.

“Are you asking me?” Eames finally breathes. His poker chip tells him its not a dream – and yet Eames can never be too sure. Especially not with Arthur.

“...Please.”

Eames knows how it tears at Arthur to admit this, from how his jaw finally releases and his eyes close, as if he’s tired from staying awake. As if Arthur’s been trying all this time to determine what is reality and what is not, and the realization has finally come to him that yes, this is all very real: his body, his injuries, and Eames, all of it. That this isn’t a dream anymore. That death is a very possible possibility in this life, an end, and shooting himself in the head is longer the method to escape from it.

Realization leaves Arthur looking incredibly fragile. Eames watches as Arthur’s knuckles pale, hands clenched into shaky fists.

“Arthur,” Eames finally says, and he sounds dreadfully weary, “I don’t think you realize that I would do whatever you ask of me. I would hang the moon for you.”

It doesn’t even sound like a confession anymore, merely a confirmation that he hopes Arthur can finally swallow. Eames is already climbing in to the gurney as it fitfully protests under his weight, as he settles in next to Arthur.

“Okay,” is all that Arthur musters, as Eames just pulls him closer, paying careful attention to the bruises and cuts. Arthur turns away again, but Eames hears the tremble that is knitted throughout the word – and it makes Eames only want to hold him even closer.

“It’s okay, love,” Eames whispers, “Let it all out. You just let me know what you need, and you can take whatever you like.” His voice rumbles deeper than he intended it to be, but Arthur only seems to bury himself even closer into the vibration.

They stay like that for a while.

“Tell me about Venice again,” Arthur finally says.

So Eames does: he tells him about St. Mark's Square and the Basilica of course, particularly of the latter and its mosaics embossed into the high domes like delicate etchings done in gold foil; how to also appreciate the floors too, coloured marbles gridded together into beautiful patterns of circles, interweaving lines, and tiled squares. How, if Arthur rather not want to deal with crowds ("but you absolutely must go to the Basilica, darling; you must"), he could veer off the main roads and hop into a gondola - there, if he spoke enough passing Italian, he could coerce a gondolier into bringing him into the back canals to get that perfect blue-pink sunset view, watching the setting sun sink into glistening water as he tucked into what must be some sort of seafood pasta, and a glass of wine to wash it all down. He’s pleased that Arthur remembers Venice; but he keeps that joy for himself.

“Venice sounds nice,” Arthur finally mumbles into Eames’ shirt.

"It is nice," Eames agrees.

After a while, Eames re-emphasizes, “You’d love Venice, darling. I recommend it for when you finally decide to take a vacation.”

But when Eames looks over, he sees that Arthur is asleep, eyes closed and his breathing finally steady: in and out and in and out, over and over again.

––

When Eames wakes up, he is laying in Arthur’s hospital bed - and he realizes he is alone.

“Hello?” he calls out.

He waits a couple of minutes. Beside the loud incessant Thai rattling off in the background, there’s no response to his heed.

Arthur must’ve gone. Without him.

_Fair_ , Eames rationalizes, picturing Arthur's smug face, but at the same time - it hurt a little more than he thought it would.

He gets up, trying to place himself: how long has it been since he's fallen asleep; where is everyone? When did Arthur leave?

Groggily, he tries to find the sun, but ends up looking at his watch to solve the first question. He must've only slept for an hour or two, but must've fallen into a deep enough sleep that his eyes struggle to remain open, crust collecting at the corners of his eyes.

But of his last two questions, he wasn't sure of their answers, particularly the last one.

He just doesn't know what to feel about Arthur anymore. He and Arthur - they still had a job to do together. Arthur didn't have to leave. Always with Arthur, it felt like for every tremendous step in the right direction, Eames had taken two equally large steps back.

Perhaps he and his poker chip had been compromised. Perhaps everything that transpired between he and Arthur in the hospital, perhaps it had only been a dream.

To be frank, he rather be sleeping then; Eames groans through a yawn.

He starts going through his pockets again, like he did earlier that morning in the hotel lobby, by habit (once a thief, always a thief). Chest pocket of his jacket: pen, tissue, two chocolate mints. Right pants pocket: poker chip. Left pants pocket: coins and bills, his phone... he pauses. He was sure that he had Arthur's phone in there too... and it barely takes a second for Eames to piece together where exactly the phone went.

That fucker.

As Eames rifles through the pocket one more time, he swears loudly, frustrated. He tried didn't he? He tried his best, he put himself out there, played the fool and left his heart out on a bullseye for Arthur to throw knives at it. Someday, he'll learn his lesson, learn how to give up. Maybe this is even a sign - maybe this is the sign that the day is nigh, or today even, that this is the last job that he'll work on with Arthur, time for him to say goodbye and part ways. It hurts like a dark wound that never is quite able to heal, leaving it alone the most obvious, yet unattractive, cure. He'll have to stop this for real this time, hide himself away in some hot country so Arthur would never find him, Arthur likely too afraid of sweat browning the starch in his shirts - maybe Eames will do that, as soon as he figures out Arthur took anything else -

Eames freezes. His fingers grasp at something foreign in his pocket: a square folded piece of paper. A note?

He hesitantly pulls it out.

It’s an itinerary.

Eames’ old itinerary mind you, the one that he fished out from his suitcase earlier that morning. He opens it again; unfolded, he sees that there is a new column etched out after the timeline for the job, indicating an additional day.

_Venice_ , it says in this new column, written in sharp and jagged script. There are several other words scrawled hastily into the bottom of the itinerary that tells him to: _Don’t be late._

A boarding pass flutters into his lap.

Realization strikes him like black paint on a white canvas. He immediately grabs at the boarding pass and jams it into his pocket.

Eames doesn’t even look at the details of that precious slip of paper, to check the date or the time or the destination. He already knows where he is going with certainty; his ticket to _what could be_. He just takes off past the curtains, leaps out of the bed with the grace of a overzealous baby gazelle; he must be dashing down the hospital corridor, colliding into nurses, with what can only be the stupidest smile across his face.

No, he doesn't even need to reach for his poker chip this time, nor does he need to remember to.

He's going to Venice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Love to hear your thoughts if you enjoyed! 
> 
> You can also hit me up [@1fifthbusiness](https://twitter.com/1fifthbusiness) on twitter.


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